Recorded at Evlana's inaugural concert at the University Church Dublin on 29th September 2015. This concert took place with the support of the Arts Council Ireland Project Funding Award. 

Performers: Sylvia O'Brien (soprano) and William Dowdall (flute)

Kaija Saariaho - Changing Light

The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne is one of the greatest Irish prose narratives. A tale from the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology dating from the tenth century. In order to avoid an arranged marriage with the much older Fionn Mac Cumhaill, Gráinne eloped from the palace of Tara with the handsome warrior Diarmuid, and they spent the next sixteen years on the run from Fionn and his army, living as nomads in the woods and valleys of Ireland. As they fled from the Fianna, Gráinne recited a protective and enchanting lullaby, for her lover, Diarmuid as he slept. Sleep Songs, or what has come to be known as lullabies are an aspect of Irish music deeply embedded into its cultural ethos and mythology, accounting for one of the Three Noble Strains of Irish music: the geantraí, goltraí and suantraí . The term suantraí does not directly translate to the English conception of ‘lullaby’. Instead, it is more accurately defined as enchanted or magical music of calm, which often, based on context, resulted in either calming into sleep or magical sleeping spells, a tool of liminality, magic, and transformation. Gráinne’s narrative is driven heavily by an account of their natural surroundings with descriptions of animals who are also awake keeping watch over the sleeping Diarmuid. It is above all else a poem of great tenderness and fierce protective love. 
Sleep Song was commissioned by Elizabeth Hilliard with funds provided by the Arts Council of Ireland. SC

Sleepsong Siobhan Cleary/Elizabeth Hilliard

Lore Lixenberg and RLPO's Ensemble 10/10 conducted by Clark Rundell (2010)
Premiered in Liverpool, 2010. Music and words by Ailís Ní Ríain:

"I am holding you aloft
Raising you up
Pillared above my fading colours-
Somehow you seep them from me,
I live with you in my blood
Bleeding into my bloodstream,
In sleep you surround me within
Stealing compliments from my lips
Of who you are and your effect on me.

Then I begin to let you down-
Softly
Slowly
Safely
Sweetly
Harness this?

Stay.
Stay with me."

In Sleep, Mvt IV - Ailís Ní Ríain

A piece I wrote for solo percussion using texts from death-row inmate Norman (Rashad) Parker, who played drums in his free-life. The percussionist (Jonni Axelsson in this performance) is in a cell which measures 1.8 by 2.7 metres (the size of a death-row cell) built of percussion instruments, all of which he plays during the course of the performance. Mr Parker is still on death-row, one of the longest inmates there. http://www.dc.state.fl.us/oth/deathrow/

Rashad's Words for percussion solo

Written for Adele and Martin Johnson , viola and cello in 2016 and premiered at the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin's Salon series.

Swells And Shoots 2016

drone + field exercise 1 for DDR 2018

This Is Real was commissioned by the DMEP (Donegal Music Education Partnership) in 2017. It is for tape, Panoramic String Quartet and amateur string orchestra. The live performers were the Donegal Chamber Orchestra and the Robinson Panoramic String Quartet. The quartet is so called as it consists of bass, cello, viola and violin-hence a greater, more panoramic register--a very different animal to a string quartet in the usual sense! The tape part uses recordings which are all from Donegal locations, done in Aug-Sept 2017. In a way the piece is a homage to Donegal. Major thanks to all and also to Adrian Hart who did this amazing recording from the Dublin premiere at Kaleidoscope Spring Gala 2018.

This Is Real

Performed by Anna Tsybuleva Recorded At Linenhall Arts Centre 
A Music Network Commission
An Cailleach
i Dùbhlacht :“ Darkness” : Bleak, frozen stillness of the shortest days of the year. ii Faoilleach: “ Wolf ” : Ravenous, winter y blizzards.
iii Feadag: “ Plover”: Sharp, piping cold.
iv Scuabag: “ Sweeper” A soughing wind that ushers in the Spring
In preliterate times, seasons were observed by the hours of light, weather patterns and lunar cycles, rather than any set calendrical date. Stories were invented and handed down generation by generation, in order to explain the astronomical divisions of the year; the vagaries of the weather and the shortening and lengthening of the days.
In the folklore of Ireland and Scotland, the Cailleach was the embodiment of winter, among many other things. Incarnated as an old hag at the end of Autumn (Samhain) she brings winter’s elemental destruction until she is recreated once again at the beginning of Summer (Beltaine) as a young maiden.
These four short piano pieces take their title from a Scottish Gaelic legend which depicts the multitudinous ways the Cailleach casts her hibernal spell from Ben Nevis over her lands, until she is transformed, inevitably (and annually) into Spring.

Sleepsong Siobhan Cleary/Elizabeth Hilliard

siobhancleary

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